


all my goodness going with you

by orphanbeat



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Bisexuality, Co-Dependency, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, I didn't want to clog up any tags, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, Lost Weekend Era, M/M, Requited Unrequited Love, There are a few relationships mentioned here, but there's mention of john/stuart, john/brian - Freeform, john/david bowie lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:22:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23897464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphanbeat/pseuds/orphanbeat
Summary: “You’re killing yourself out here, John.”“This is the happiest I’ve ever been,” John says defiantly, and it feels as true as it does petulant.--John and Paul reunite during John's infamous "Lost Weekend".
Relationships: John Lennon/May Pang, John Lennon/Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Yoko Ono (mentioned), Linda McCartney/Paul McCartney
Comments: 23
Kudos: 82





	all my goodness going with you

**Author's Note:**

> I had this saved as my “John-is-25%-better-at-communication!AU”. Maybe one day I’ll write a companion piece where I give Paul the braincell. 
> 
> So, yeah, key word there: AU! No defamation intended and all that! This is 0% realistic (except, I guess for the “I miss Paris” line, which is such a bonkers thing for John to have really said); please take it all with a giant grain of salt. 
> 
> I don’t really know what the timing of this is. I don’t know the 70s timeline very well, but I imagine it’s summer ‘74? 
> 
> Keep in mind, I said “25% better”, not that John is actually any good at communication. And Paul is, you guessed it, even worse. It crashes and burns.
> 
> Also, I just wanted to live in a world where John is bi and deeply ok with it. This is as close as this John let me get.

The corridor in the Dakota is plain. Plain in a way that Paul can’t imagine John looking at every day of his life. He thinks the sunshine might be exactly what John needs, and he feels sick to his stomach. He doesn’t want to be here, feels trapped by this building’s walls, but it’s the exact same place he’s meant to drag John back to. 

But it’s better this way. 

If half of the stories of John’s trysts in California were true, bringing John home was for the best. Or, at least that’s what Yoko had said.

He feels Linda slip her hand into his when they’re in the elevator, and he finally feels like he can breathe again. 

“She wouldn’t have asked if she thought you couldn’t do it,” she says. 

“I know,” he says, squeezing her hand, but keeping his eyes glued to the floor numbers as they count down to his freedom. 

It should feel like a victory. Paul knows it should. Yoko had been at her wit’s end. She’d tried to get through to John in her own ways and had failed. And all that was left was Paul. He could ruin her, he thinks bitterly. He could go out to California and make sure John  _ never _ comes home. He could go to California and bring John back to England with him. 

It should feel like a victory, but Paul just feels afraid. 

John’s always made him feel afraid. He could go to California and bring John back to England with him, sure, but he could also go to California and then never leave. He could live inside the space between John’s heart and his chest. He could disappear completely and turn pink with love and resolution. 

“I’m sure he’d love to see you,” Linda says. 

“I know,” Paul returns again. And maybe that’s just it. John could be  _ happy _ to see him, and what then? Where does it go from there? Where will Paul not be able to stop it from going?

He feels thick and heavy with nerves and dread, all the way to John’s door in Santa Monica. 

The door opens and… John looks like a rock star in double-denim. The breath catches in his throat and he hopes the same had happened to John. 

“My God,” John mutters with a smile (though he’s been expecting them), then shouts deeper into the house: “May, you’re not going to believe this, it’s Paul McCartney at the door!”

Paul hears an unfamiliar voice shout back: “Beatle Paul?”

“ _ Ex _ -Beatle,” John corrects, as Linda steps towards him and presses a soft kiss to his cheek. 

“Hello, John,” she says to him. 

“Lovely Linda,” he responds. Then, May Pang is next to him. She wraps herself around his waist and beams at Paul and Linda. “Ah,” John says, remembering his manners. “Paul, Linda, this is my May. May, the McCharmley’s.”

Her smile is so infectious that Paul finds himself finally stepping in past the threshold to shake her hand. She’s trembling with excitement and goes adorably pink when Paul touches her. It reminds him of the few meet-and-greet situations they’d been in as Beatles in the best possible way, so he says: “Was I your favourite?”

“I liked Ringo,” she shoots back immediately. 

John pulls her firmer against him, smiling widely. “Oh,” he says through a laugh. “Ouch.”

Without a word, John guides them deeper into the house. The entryway opens up into the sitting room. There are instruments everywhere. Discarded guitars and ukeleles. A piano in the far corner. And Paul suddenly realizes he hadn’t seen any instruments in the Dakota. “Anyway,” John says easily, going to the record player. “This is the place, if you want a tour, do it yourself.”

“John,” May hisses. 

“What?” John says, throwing a glance over his shoulder. “It’s just Paul, he knows how it is.” Paul finds himself smiling, feeling safe and secure beyond the realm of casual acquaintances. “Besides,” John continues, waving his hand at May lazily. “It’s not even our house. It’d be a bit daft to tour a hotel suite, don’t you think?”

“Don’t you think you should at least show them their room?”

Seemingly ignoring her, John finds the record he was looking for. Paul immediately recognizes the green sleeve of  _ Pet Sounds _ . “I just figured they’d drop dead wherever they were at the end of the night,” he says, sliding the record from its sleeve. 

May rolls her eyes, then grabs onto Linda’s arm, immediately guiding her towards the back hallway. She mutters something about having to do everything herself, but it hasn’t got any bite. They’re gone in a flash, and the room goes still and quiet until the first few notes of  _ Wouldn’t It Be Nice _ ring out around them. 

John turns to Paul and smiles widely. 

“My favourite record,” Paul says lamely. 

John nods. “I’m one hell of a host.” He approaches Paul and stops about a foot from him. He looks him up and down, and then smiles. 

“Do I pass the test?” Paul asks, and his voice catches in his throat. 

John steps closer to him, picks some fluff off the front of his shirt and then nods. “You look good, Macca.”

Paul feels himself blush, so he pokes back: “You look strange with a tan.”

John laughs, says: “I’m a California boy now, get used to it.” And Paul swallows down the urge to say that he thinks he could. He spends a moment wondering what drugs John could be on right now, before one thing feels too true in his heart: it doesn’t matter. Because John’s  _ happy to see him _ . 

Somewhere after their third glasses of wine, John shoves a guitar into Paul’s lap. Paul watches John pick one up for himself and feels the warm familiarity of being eyeball-to-eyeball with John Lennon. Like a good left-handed boy, Paul mentally prepares himself to play the guitar backwards before he realizes it’s been strung properly for him. He feels like flowers growing through cement. He looks up at John, who’s still getting himself comfortable across from him. He imagines his friend, hanging dutifully over a guitar, performing a task he’d never have to do for himself. He thinks: I love you, and John doesn’t even have to say it back, because he already has. 

“You remember  _ 909 _ ?” John asks. And Paul can only nod. 

Paul remembers writing it with John. John remembers writing it with Paul too. They’d just been kids. It feels like it had come out of them a lifetime ago. He remembers recording it. Remembers wondering if the magic would come back if they sang one of their old tunes. And it hadn’t. It painfully hadn’t. He thinks this song must be their litmus test. 

Paul matches his tempo without even having to ask. It’s slower than the way they recorded it; closer to the way they’d written it. John thinks he feels Liverpool rise up around him. Then New York and Ed Sullivan. His hands feel electric with the excitement of it all. He feels the years he’d allowed to pass him by. Feels how happy he’d been. How elated he’d been to be doing it all with Paul next to him. 

They play the last chord, and they’re together. It rings out around them and John thinks that it might never stop. Paul laughs, that same joy is in him now too. And John thinks:  _ you’re back _ . Wherever John had gone, Paul had found his way back. Would he always? Did all those fierce years between them not matter? Was there anywhere that Paul couldn’t find his way back to?

He’s overwhelmed by the urge to reach out and take Paul’s hand, so he plays it safe instead: he says, “More wine?” and lifts himself up off the couch before anyone can answer. 

He finally feels like he can breathe again as soon as he steps into the kitchen. But he still feels Paul in his lungs. He feels Linda join him before he hears her. She sidles up next to him at the counter and holds her empty glass out to him. He smiles, polishes off the bottle between the two of them. 

“Thank you,” she says, turning on the spot and leaning back against the counter. She looks out over the kitchen and the sitting room beyond it. She’s not leaving and John knows he isn’t either. He turns too, mirroring her, gulping down some extra wine for whatever conversation she’s meaning to have. 

He thinks he likes it; her forwardness, her obviousness. John had always pretended he didn’t know what Paul had seen in her all those years ago, but now, he can’t miss her warmth.

She’s watching Paul, guitar still in his lap, strumming at it quietly while May makes him laugh. He looks terribly comfortable, tapping his bare feet against the carpet like John imagines he would at his own home. He looks glassy with wine, like he could either kiss you or fall asleep at any moment. 

John’s missed him. All of him. His glassiness, his music, his laugh. He looks to Linda and she’s looking back at him. He has to wonder how much of this was something she orchestrated. She smiles again and he smiles back. 

“You two sounded good,” she says.. 

John feels pride swell up in his chest. He’d thought the same. “Thanks,” he says. 

“Any new Lennon-McCartney originals in your future?” She nudges him playfully, and John actually feels his cheeks go rosy. He feels like a teenager again. 

“I dunno,” he says casually, over a god-awful grin. 

“Paul would like to write with you again too,” she says, as if that’s what he’d said. She stands up a little straighter, gives him another once-over and tugs at his denim shirt, hanging half-open on his chest. “You look good, John,” she says. 

“As opposed to when?” John says. He knows an under-handed compliment when he hears one. 

But Linda doesn’t back down. She just shrugs and says: “When we first properly met.”

John laughs, just at the sheer shock of it. He shakes his head, and she smiles up at him. “Christ, Lin,” he says. “Tell me how you really feel.”

She shrugs and then goes serious. “You remember our chat at Twickenham back then?” she asks, and John can’t unhear the small English mannerisms that have crept into her American accent. He’s been surrounded by Americans for so long, he’s missed the sound of an English accent. It’s a little bit of home. It’s a little bit of care and knowing, soft as a mother’s words. 

John thinks he could hide behind his own drug addiction back then. Act like he doesn’t remember much from those dreadful  _ Get Back _ sessions that Linda and Yoko had seen. But he does. He remembers Linda, picking at all the things that made him angry, putting words to feelings he hadn’t even fully processed yet. She could read him, even then, at his most unreadable. 

“Hmm,” John says. 

Linda turns towards him. “How you felt like you were all at your best, musically?” She pauses, and John finds himself nodding, just to get her to fill the silence around them. “But that you mostly just felt alone.”

“I wasn’t alone,” John says, thinking of Yoko. 

“Good, but alone,” Linda persists. “That’s how you said you felt.”

“Yes,” John says blithely. “That’s how I felt.”

“You didn’t look alone in there,” she says, gesturing towards Paul with her glass. “Maybe all you needed was some time to just  _ get back _ .” 

John rolls his eyes at the heavy-handedness of it all. He’d been so angry and so lonely, he’d spewed it all to any stranger in the studio who would listen, and Paul had been writing a bleeding song called  _ Get Back _ . Why hadn’t they just talked? All this, bubbling at the surface, and a whole film to prove they’d never really even said a word to one another. And Linda, as deliberately as she was now, talking about it all. Trying to guide them back towards one another without something sour on their tongues. Why hadn’t they? John thinks of Yoko alone in the Dakota and pretends he hasn’t. 

“It felt good,” John says, feeling the warmth of Paul’s voice fitting into the empty spaces of his own. 

“It was magic to watch,” Linda says. “And not just because you’re Beatles.”

And John knows she’s right. Because he’d felt it too. That long-awaited thing that had seemed to follow he and Paul around when they were younger. It was back, and sat comfortable somewhere behind his rib cage. He nods, mumbles a soft: “yeah,” before he feels Linda’s hand at the small of his back. 

She smiles up at him and John goes cold at the thought of what she must really know. About him. About him and Paul. He looks away from her and his eyes inadvertently find Paul. He watches him laugh with May, and John thinks he’s never seen two people he’s ever wanted to make happier. 

“What’s he told you, then?” John hears himself ask anyway, ruining the moment the only way he knows how to. 

“Nothing I couldn’t have guessed at,” she says with a shrug. She leans towards him. He feels blanketed by her weight on him. It’s sweet and comforting, in its own way. “I  _ do _ have eyes, you know.”

John laughs, he has to. Linda laughs along with him. And May must hear it, because she looks up at him from the couch and holds her empty glass out to him with a wide smile. 

“More wine for me and Paul!” Paul laughs and mirrors her position, smiling to John placatingly. 

“Duty calls,” Linda mutters, stepping away from him and John thinks he already misses her next to him. 

He lifts the empty bottle and shows it to them. “We’re out,” he says. 

“We’re out?” May parrots back. “Well, that’s no good. We have to get more!”

“The ladies will go,” Linda says, making her way back to Paul. She glances back at John, before she smiles to May. “It’ll be an adventure,” she continues, but May doesn’t need any further convincing. She’s smiling broadly, as excited to get to know Linda as John had felt. 

John steps back into the living room as Linda and May rush towards the door in a whirlwind. Behind their giggling, John realizes that their record’s stopped. 

“You should have told me it was over,” John says to Paul, heading towards the crates.

Still smiling, Paul says: “Didn’t notice.” The front door shuts behind May and Linda and Paul says: “she’s great.”

“Yeah,” John says, leafing through the record sleeves, and he honestly means it. “Better than I deserve, I reckon.”

Paul doesn’t say anything back to that, and not because he thinks it’s true. He’s not even looking, but John can see it: the way he’d purse his lips disapprovingly. Might even cross his arms over his chest. John smiles fondly, then comes across Paul’s face in the stack of music. He’s unavoidable, John thinks, even if he’d wanted to avoid him. 

It’s  _ Band on the Run _ , and John’s already humming his favourite song. It feels cheeky. Playing Paul to Paul. John smiles, remembering how they’d poked fun at one another’s voices whenever  _ She Loves You _ came on the radio because they weren’t ready to admit how happy and grateful they were that they’d been born at the same time and had found each other. 

John drops the needle; he glances over his shoulder at Paul. His eyes are soft and distant, but he must feel John looking, because the corner of his mouth smirks upward, and his eyes dart across the room to where John still stands at the record player. “That’s me,” Paul says, sweetly surprised. 

John huffs out a small, genuine laugh. He turns to Paul, saunters back towards the couch, offering a small swing of his hips to show his friend he never stopped being into his music. “Good ear,” John says. “Great musician, that Paul McCartney.”

“Takes one to know one,” Paul says, watching as John shifts closer to him on the sofa. 

“Nah,” John dismisses. “I peaked in 1957.”

Paul’s eyes fall down to his lap. He shakes his head minutely. “That’s not true.”

“Sixty-seven, then,” John allows. 

“You don’t write enough, John,” Paul blurts out. John thinks that ought to sound like criticism, but all he really hears is:  _ I want more. Please give me more. _

Feeling hot and electric, John fishes into his pocket for a cigarette. “I write when the inspiration strikes.” He shrugs, offering a cigarette to Paul. “That’s why you always had more songs. You wrote like it was your job.”

“It  _ was _ my job --” 

“Do you think you’d have done it even if they never paid you for it?”

Paul blanches. His mouth opens and then shuts. John remembers being a teenager in Liverpool. Angry and sad, and in love with everything. Screaming at the top of his lungs to any record that felt like home. And Paul, missing his mother more than John ever gave him credit for, doing the same thing. He hangs his chin down towards his chest, embarrassed by the question. Embarrassed by what he knows the answer is, because it’s been his answer too, all these years. 

“ _ Music _ ?” Paul asks incredulously, but what he’s really saying is:  _ how dare you ask me that _ . 

John shakes his head. “Don’t answer that,” he says apologetically. “I know you would have.”

“Being a Beatle was a job,” Paul says anyway. “I’m sorry that that meant something to me. Even at the end.”

“That’s not --”

“But  _ music _ ,” Paul says, fiercely defending himself. “Music was the thing when there was nothing.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t have anything else,” Paul says. “When we were Beatles, I didn’t have anything else. So I couldn’t lose it. And I was scared that I would. If we didn’t keep making hits. I was afraid…” He pauses, composes himself, but his voice still trembles under the weight of it. “I was afraid that if we stopped producing at the level they thought we were capable of, they would figure it out.”

John thinks he looks so genuinely terrified that he wants to reach out and hold his hand. The way they might have when they were kids. “Figure what out?” he asks softly. 

Paul stares at him, as if the answer is obvious. “That we were frauds.”

John immediately shakes his head, even though he remembers a time so clearly when he’d thought the same thing. When he’d thought that there was nothing magical about Beatles, nothing of significance. He’s suddenly struck by how adamant he feels. Like, if Paul’s gone and left the core of them unprotected, there’s nobody left. 

“We were good,” John urges. He looks up at Paul, who knows that’s true, but still just looks defeated.

“Yeah,” he allows. “But we’d lost something.” 

John thinks of Linda; always with Paul, even when she’s not. He thinks of himself, again, for the second time in a day, at Twickenham Studios.  _ Good, but alone _ . For the first time in his self-centered life, he wonders if Paul had felt that way too. 

“I’m sorry,” John hears himself say before he can stop it. 

Paul sits up straighter. “What?” he asks around a gulping breath. 

John wants to fold in on himself, wants to disappear into the cushions and let Paul lose himself in his own music. He feels his foot start to bounce wildly and he derides himself, wondering why this has always been so hard. 

“I thought we’d lost something too,” John says. He looks up at Paul, sees him shaking and decides, he’s started this, he’s going to finish it. “But it was just different, you know?” He takes a deep breath, goes another direction. “You’ve been with Linda for what -- five years now?”

“About that,” Paul allows. 

“Do you feel as excited by her now as you did back then?”

Paul’s shoulders dip, and John knows he’s understood. “I don’t know,” he says diplomatically. 

“Do you love her as much as you did?”

“I love her  _ more _ ,” Paul bites back, and John thinks:  _ there _ . That’s what had been different. They’d written their first songs together, felt elated and satiated by the connection and catharsis it had allowed. They’d written  _ Pepper _ ; this magnificent swirl of the both of them, finding sounds they couldn’t have even described to anyone but themselves. They’d made one another stronger. All those years, they’d made one another  _ better _ . So much better that they could finally stand by themselves. All those years John had spent feeling  _ good, but alone _ . He’d never really been alone. Because anywhere he stood, anywhere he sang and wrote, Paul stood there too. Proud as a lover. Having built him. 

“I blamed you for the way things felt different. I thought something must have broken,” John says. “But really, I just loved you  _ more _ .”

For a moment, Paul looks like he could cry. John wonders if he’d even be able to. Hadn’t he cried enough about all this? But then again, John had never really told him the truth. Feeling trapped and vulnerable, Paul puts on a dumb smile: “Johnny,” he starts. 

“I’m being serious.”

And that wipes that smile off his face pretty quick. He nods, eyes down on the carpet in front of him. “I know,” he mutters, and John thinks he maybe missed the point, so he says again: “I’m sorry.”

John watches him, keeps his eyes glued on Paul. Sees all his tells. Watches him chew on his lip. Watches him jerk his fringe off his forehead. When he finally looks up at John, John can see the way his jaw is strained with the effort of holding it all together. 

“I’m sorry too,” he finally says. “I really did love you, John,” he adds, because  _ of course _ there’s more than music. There’s always been more. It sounds so true and heartfelt, John wonders how he’d ever doubted it. But he had. Constantly. And he’d told Paul as much as often as he could. “I didn’t always know what you needed,” Paul allows. “But I loved you the best I could.”

“I should have left it at that,” John says with a rueful grin. “You just left me limping, that’s all,” he adds, hoping that how cavalier he sounds might somehow be in direct relation to how much pain he’d been in when Paul had proposed to Jane Asher after their enlightenment in India. 

“I did love Jane,” Paul says, as if that might make this whole thing easier. “I was just afraid.” John holds his breath: waits for  _ of us _ .  _ Of you _ . But it never comes. 

And John suddenly sees the years. He sees the weight of his loving Paul. John had always had too much. And so much of that he’d put on Paul. Expecting him to carry this with him simply because he was the only person who hadn’t run away. 

“I put too much on you,” John says and Paul doesn’t protest. “I was in love with you,” he continues, ignoring the way that the past tense doesn’t sit right in his mouth. “But you weren’t everything. That wasn’t…” John shakes his head, hates the way he settles on: “Fair…” It feels feeble, but cleansing in its honesty. He feels suddenly spurred on by that honesty. How it had felt in his chest, and wants to run away with it. “I knew what I was,” he says, ignoring the way old voices from Liverpool come back to him in a taunting and cruel way. “And I thought that if it was just you… If it was just you that I loved, then I wouldn’t have to say it.”

“Say what?” Paul asks, and John suddenly realizes he still hasn’t put a word to the way that he is. 

He feels his cheeks go red-hot with shame, and thinks, he’s here. And with Paul. He’s said far worse. He’s  _ been _ far worse. “That I like men,” he says, quickly, like tearing off a band-aid. “That I… want to be with them.” Paul raises his eyebrows, as though he’s surprised and John feels compelled to tell a joke. “Oh, come on, Paul, as if you didn’t  _ know _ .”

“No, I…” He laughs, because of course  _ he knew _ . John had kissed him. Had wanted more, but Paul turned him down. “Well, I  _ knew _ , didn’t I, I just…” He smiles. “I’m happy that you’ve…” He shakes his head, correcting himself: “I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks,” John mumbles. 

“So, you’re… what? Bisexual?” Paul prods, and that word sits right on John’s chest, so he nods. 

“I think so.”

“And you’ve…” Paul trails off.  _ Been with men. Men who aren’t me _ . 

“Yes,” John answers for him. 

“With who?”

John furrows his brow. “Does it matter?”

Paul shrugs. “I just wish you’d told me.” And he means it so readily that John finds himself missing the years that he could have been proudly himself with Paul. “All these years,” Paul says, missing the same thing. “You could have told me. I wouldn’t have cared--”

“Stuart,” John says. And he smiles at the way that Paul’s mouth immediately wires shut. 

“Okay,” Paul says carefully. He ashes his cigarette onto the carpet. “Okay, I  _ might _ have cared.”

“Jealous?”

“No,” Paul says, his voice high and indignant. He hears it as clearly as John does, so he smiles and adds: “Shut up.”

He feels safe with Paul. Supported by Paul, so he continues: “Brian.” Paul looks unsurprised, so John throws him a wrench. “David Bailey.” Paul’s eyes go wide as saucers. And John thinks,  _ I bet I could make him go scarlet _ , so he says: “Elton.”

Paul sputters out: “Elton  _ John _ ?” It takes him a moment to see John’s shit-eating grin and realize he’s been had. “Very funny,” he says, rolling his eyes. “David Bowie, I guess too, then, hey?”

And a drunken night comes roaring back to John: “Oh, yeah. Dave!” Paul visibly deflates, his cleverness quickly backfiring. 

John laughs and they both relax against the back of the couch. Paul’s voice is still sounding over the speakers around them. John turns to watch Paul listen to his own music. But he looks shier than John might have expected. And he realizes that Paul’s not even listening. 

“You know,” John says quietly, wanting to give this moment the weight he’d always intended. “This doesn’t mean…” He takes a deep breath. “What I felt for you was different. I just…” He looks away, but doesn’t miss the way Paul is nodding, spurring him on. “I just thought it might make you feel better. To know that I wasn’t building this whole thing -- that this wasn’t another thing you had to hold. I don’t know,” he chides himself. “It’s coming out all wrong.”

“I know what you’re saying, John,” Paul says. 

“You do?” John finds himself shifting closer to Paul. He wants Paul to look at him. He wants him to feel this same openness and contentedness he’s got running through him. But Paul just looks nervous. John reaches out, wants to take his hand, but stops short. Instead, he traces along the pattern in the couch cushion.

“I sometimes wished I was that way too,” Paul says, his voice small and uncertain. “That it wasn’t just you that I…” He stops himself before he says it. “It would make more sense that way, but that’s just it.” He turns to look at John, and looks just as sad and confused John could imagine himself having looked. “It  _ is _ just you.”

John finds himself thinking of Tara Browne, of Robert Fraser, and John Baldry. “You never thought about…”

“ _ No _ .” Paul continues to chew on his lip. So much so, that John actually thinks he might chew a hole right through the skin. So, he decides,  _ fuck it _ , he reaches out and takes Paul’s fingers in his hand. Paul looks down at it, then slips his hand deeper into John’s. “Everything was different with you,” Paul pushes forward. “And maybe that’s why I was so afraid of trying new things with you. With everyone else, it was just  _ things _ , you know?” John nods, thinking of Paul dropping acid for the first time with Tara Browne. How angry he’d been that Paul had turned him down, rejected that advance for months. And the puzzle seems to finally fall into place. “I never had to worry about losing myself to them.” John has to bite down on the urge to say that he wouldn’t have taken anything from Paul, because he would have. He would have eaten this up, held onto it dearly and never let go. “But you…” John swallows hard, nods, urging Paul to continue. But there aren’t words. And Paul gives up on looking for them. He just says: “ _ You _ …” 

It’s somehow nothing and everything all at once. John feels something bloom in his chest. He feels so naked and reborn that he has to look away. He stares as Paul’s record continues to go round-and-round. And John suddenly realizes: it’s playing his favourite song. 

He hums along with it. He closes his eyes when Paul turns to watch him. “It’s a great album,” John says to the way everything seems to be going fuzzy around him. “But this…  _ I can’t tell you how I feel _ … This one’s my favourite.”

“I wrote it for you,” he hears Paul say. Paul looks away when their eyes meet. “Or with you. I don’t know. You were there, anyway.”

“I was in New York,” John says lamely. 

“You know what I mean,” Paul says. 

“Yeah,” John allows. 

There’s a long enough pause that John finds himself holding his breath. “Have you written any songs for me?” Paul asks.

John laughs, bitterly remembers about all of  _ Imagine _ , the good and the bad and says: “Christ, what haven’t I written for you, Paul? Or  _ because _ of you,” he amends. 

“I feel that way too,” Paul offers. “Like I can’t--”

“Get you out of my head,” John finishes for him. 

“Yeah.” His voice sounds like a gasp. John feels his cheeks go hot. Maybe it’s an accident, but he looks at Paul’s lips, sees that they’re hanging half-open. Openly vulnerable and wanting something he’s too afraid to ask for. And maybe it’s because he’s listening to his favourite Paul McCartney song and Paul McCartney is sitting next to him, pliant and delicate. But he feels suddenly unafraid. He reaches out and sets his hand on Paul’s knee. Lets his fingers trail slowly up toward something he knows isn’t his. Conscious or unconscious, it doesn’t matter, but John sees the way Paul opens his legs a bit wider. 

He looks down at his own hand, getting increasingly lost in the blackness of Paul’s denim. Then back up at Paul. “Do you still think you could lose yourself to me?”

Paul’s chest rises and falls heavily. He nods, before he breathlessly says: “Yes.” John fills in:  _ and only you _ , and that’s enough. He slips himself onto Paul’s lap and lets his hand wander past the opened buttons at Paul’s collar. He kisses Paul, drinks him in, and when he closes his eyes, he can see himself: twenty-one and romantic. And again, twenty-seven and unloveable, but it’s still Paul underneath him. 

John kisses him, but what he really means is  _ thank you _ . Thank you, for allowing me to fit right here. Thank you for finding me. He presses his body against Paul’s and thinks, this is it. Paul doesn’t even have to look at him to feel like he’s a part of him. 

“I never stopped,” John tells him, kissing a line along Paul’s jaw. He never stopped loving Paul. The urgency he feels to show him fills John up. 

He kneels himself down in between Paul’s legs and thinks that this must be what it feels like to find religion. He runs his hands along the backs of Paul’s calves, around the smooth curve of his knees, and up the lean strength of his thighs. He kisses the inside of Paul’s knee, feels Paul shiver, even though he’s still wearing all of his clothes. 

“John,” Paul manages, bucking his hips closer to the edge of the sofa, closer to John. “We shouldn’t.”

John looks up at Paul from under his eye lashes. Paul looks blissfully blown-out, so diametrically opposed to his words, it makes John’s chest ache. So, instead of offering an answer, John deftly works at Paul’s belt buckle. He feels Paul’s hands on the back of his own, keeping his eyes locked on Paul’s. 

“I could do this,” John tells him. “Forever,” he adds. “May knows what this is. She knows this is only temporary.” 

“John…”

“Couldn’t you do this forever?” He doesn’t dare bring up Linda, but he knows she’s there. Somewhere, on the tip of Paul’s tongue. So he kisses Paul, keeps his mouth occupied, until all he can hear is  _ it’s just you _ …

Keeping no space between them, John works Paul’s fly open. He feels Paul gasp into the back of his throat. He thinks about the way he knees ache and has to admit: he’s never felt so whole without a guitar in his hands. 

Paul pulls away just long enough to say: “What about Yoko?”

John kisses him again, closing his eyes. “What about her?”

“You’re going back to her,” Paul breathes out. He says it as though it’s a fact, but it’s never felt more untrue. John shakes his head, kisses down Paul’s throat and across his collarbone. “She wants you back,” Paul continues, and John just wishes that he’d stop. 

John scoffs at the idea of Paul being somehow close enough to Yoko to read her mind. He imagines them, looking into one another’s eyes, passing thoughts back and forth the way John had done with Paul for years. He smiles, knowing it’s always just been him and Paul. “Since when do you pretend to know what she thinks?” John asks, and he feels Paul go stiff beneath him. 

John stops. He pulls away, looks down his nose at Paul and sees everything: he sees Paul across from Yoko. Not having to pretend he knows; he knows because she’s told him. They’ve spoken about him. And Paul’s just relayed her message. 

John feels sick; his fingers feel dull where he’s touched Paul. His lips don’t even feel like they belong to him anymore. He shifts backward. Paul follows him, and he looks so sorry that John knows he’s guessed right. 

“What is this?” John asks, the electricity between them overflowing into a lightning storm. 

“John…”

“What is this, Paul?” John asks again. 

“She wants you back.” It’s as much an answer as it is a non-answer. John sits back on his haunches. Feels every good thing leave his body all at once. The world falls out around him. The world where Paul loved him back. Where Paul wanted him -- just him -- forever. He swallows hard, hates that he’d ever allowed himself to marvel at what a beautiful world that might have been. 

“And so, you…” John manages, but clamps his mouth shut, when he thinks he sounds just as he had in Blackpool. 

“She’s worried about you,” Paul continues, as if any of this matters. As if Yoko matters. As if there’s a way that John might be able to outswim whatever’s surrounding him. “And I am too.” Paul’s crying when John looks up at him. John sullenly realizes that he is too. He hears Paul’s record and wants to break it in half. “The things I was  _ hearing _ …” Paul shakes his head. It all sounds flimsy as it comes out of his mouth. “The drinking, and the drugs. I had to -- You needed --”

“I didn’t need  _ this _ ,” John spits back. 

“You’re killing yourself out here, John,” Paul says, and he sounds more like Yoko than himself. It sounds more like a recounted opinion than what Paul’s found out here in Santa Monica. 

“This is the happiest I’ve ever been,” John says defiantly, and it feels as true as it does petulant. 

Paul opens his mouth, then wires it shut. He’s been fed something by Yoko, and now he’s met an unshakeable fact: John is projecting, John is romanticizing, but he isn’t  _ lying _ . 

“I’m sorry,” Paul whispers. “She didn’t know what else to do.”

“Why would you let me say --”  _ Forever _ .  _ It’s you _ . “Why would you let me say it, when this is all it ever was?”

John feels as foolish as he had in Paris in 1961. Waking up, his lips still stinging from kissing Paul. And Paul, sipping coffee, not knowing what to say. He’d been foolish, but he’d found something with his lips to Paul’s then. And he’d just found it again. It had been so headstrong, so tangible, that John can feel the empty space that it’s left behind. 

“John, I --” Then, the front door swings wildly open; May and Linda’s excited voices cover everything, like ink in water. But Paul looks so fervent, so tender, that John wants to hear what he has to say. He doesn’t look away from him. Ignores the noise in the entryway. But then Paul’s standing, scrambling to reset his belt. 

“John!” Linda calls in from the other room. Still, John doesn’t move. 

Paul sets himself right; sits down as close to the arm of the couch as he can. John thinks he must look pathetic, on his knees, no longer flanked by Paul’s legs, but he reckons that he’d shatter if he moves. Even if he shudders a breath. 

“John, did you know May’s never been to England?” It’s Linda again, this time she’s in the living room. She doesn’t seem to notice how heavy the room feels. Neither does May. Even Paul’s smiling, so John wonders if he’s the only one being buried alive. 

“I’ve never been,” May supplements to Paul. 

“Oh, it’s wonderful,” Linda says. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it John?” She’s slightly put out by John’s lack of response, but maintains her enthusiasm for May’s sake. “Everything, the country-side, London. Don’t you miss it at all, John?”

John takes a deep breath, feels himself crack and lets bitterness run out. “Frankly,” he says, looking up at Linda. “I miss Paris.”


End file.
